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Monday, October 31, 2011

A while back I made up these flash cards of the bulk cheese cultures (from the dairy connection) I use and how they translate to those cute little packets they sell at New England Cheesemaking Supply. I use this information all the time and I was thinking maybe someone out in cyberspace would find it useful too. Who knows. I'd love it if you'd leave me a comment if this helps you. It's nice not to feel like you are connecting :)

Now every one of these that it replaces that has a DS after it I believe that it has rennet added to the packet. So obviously you'd follow the recipe for that cheese and add rennet where it calls for it. If you are using the book Home Cheesemaking and you want to make a cheese that uses a "DS" packet.....you probably should be getting a more advanced cheese making book. That's where I am. I've moved out of that book and into a different one to get better recipes that allow me to easily use the bulk starters. I still use Home Cheesemaking a lot. Its not going anywhere.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

I'll try to get some video with all the chicks for you. We have 8 right now ranging from about 20 days old to 1 day old. They are so cute, just wait and see :)

Last week was a bad week, I hurt my back and so I've been babying it since. Its still not quite pain free but its improving. Lots of moaning and groaning about and barely keeping things up around the house. I did manage to get things caught up yesterday pretty decently and today its pretty much stayed in a good place. Between yesterday and today I've been pretty productive. Yesterday I finished the goat yard, just a bit of fenced space right outside their stall for the winter months and today I got the stall cleared out and fresh bedding down.

I went to my grandparent's house after all was done enough around here and picked pears. I must have around 1.5 to 2 bushels of unripe bartletts to play with now. The tree exacted revenge for my stealing its fruit by dropping a large one right onto my forehead from about 20 ft up. Ouch! Rang my bell for a second, took a rest and got back to working on it. My plans this year include pear butter and dried pears, which I do every year and I'm hoping to do some basic canned pears too. I'm not the biggest fan of pears in their raw form so I probably won't eat any raw. I am tempted to pick up some additional fruit at the store and make my own fruit cocktail. That should be fun for my son to try. I don't think he's ever had it since I won't buy the canned ones at the store. (I know, I'm a bad mom ....or a good one, depends on your viewpoint)

Also in canning news, I managed to dig up and salvage my sweet potatoes after the voles nearly destroyed my entire harvest. I pressure canned the rescued bits in quarts and we haven't tried them yet but I'll bet they are tasty. They sure smelled good cooking. I also cleared out the frozen fruit from the freezer and made us some jams and jellies.....mulberry jelly (tastes like grape), mixed berry jam, spiced peach blueberry and black raspberry (which came out way too stiff). The black raspberry is really the only one that didn't turn out but I found out that if I put a big scoop of that very stiff jam in the bottom of my yogurt before I set it to culture overnight then it softens nicely and blends without adding moisture so the yogurt doesn't become a drink like sometimes it can. I love when mistakes work out.

Turkey day went well, aside from a few mistakes. The big tom was too big for everything. I ended up sitting on him and unfortunately it was like riding a bronco. I got hit so many times over. He was huge. The hens all went much better and the only thing that went badly there was that we used a 5 gallon bucket with hole in the bottom and she broke the bucket and fell. Both she and the tom were used for ground turkey meat and I parted out her breasts for meals in the future. The hens weighed about 18lbs average dressed out, the tom we didn't dress out but we parted him out to 16lbs of meat so I'd say he was probably around 25lbs if we'd dressed him out. I think he might have been as much as 40lbs live. HUGE! 2 turkey were pieced out. 4 left whole, 1 for each of our families, 1 for a barter (family pictures) and 1 for us later to decide what we are doing with.

I think that's all I have for now. I'll try to find my camera tomorrow for some video of those babies! So cute!!

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About Me

I'm a stay at home mom to my 3 1/2 year old son and 3 month old daughter, and a wife to my dear husband Neil. We own a 9 acre hay field + 5 acres at our house. I think new baby chicks and sprouting seeds never lose their magic.